A company that you do business with might be both a customer and a vendor. When that's the case, you can avoid making unnecessary payments or receipts, and perhaps save on transaction fees, by consolidating the company's customer and vendor balances. Consolidation compares the company's balances as a vendor and as a customer, and then nets the amount so that that either the customer or vendor balance remains, depending on which amount was higher.

To consolidate the balances, you must first link the customer and vendor companies through a contact that has the type Company. A customer or vendor can only have one contact of the type Company. For more information, see Create Contacts.

After you link the companies, the Customer Card page offers the Balance as Vendor field, and the Vendor Card page includes the Balance as Customer field.

Though it's not a requirement, the customer and vendor companies are typically the same legal entity.

Before you consolidate balances, specify a few settings on the Marketing Setup page.

• On the Interactions FastTab, you must specify business relation codes in the Customers and Vendors fields. Business Central uses this information to determine the type of relation to display for contacts.
• Optional: On the Duplicates FastTab, turn duplicate search on or off. By default, duplicate search is turned on. For more information, see Handling duplicates.

The following steps describe how to link a customer and a vendor through a contact.

1. Choose the  icon, enter Customer or Vendor, and then choose the related link.
2. Choose the customer or vendor, and then choose the Contact action.
3. Choose the contact, and then choose the Link with existing action.
4. Choose the type of entity to create a business relation with.
5. Fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.

You can create a new vendor from an existing customer, or a new customer from a vendor. From the Customer or Vendor pages, open the Contact page. Choose the Create as action, and then either the Customer or Vendor options.

1. Create a new customer or vendor. For more information, see Register New Customers or Register New Customers.
2. After you set up the customer or vendor, choose the Create action, and then choose either the Customer or Vendor options.

On the Payment Journal page, use the Net Customer/Vendor Balances action to consolidate the customer and vendor balances into a single net amount. The action creates, but does not post, payment journal lines that contain the net balances.

 Note

If the customer or vendor balances contain amounts that are in different currencies, a line is created for the amount in each currency.

If you turn on duplicate search on the Duplicates FastTab on the Marketing Setup page, a warning will display when you change the values of fields that are part of the setup for duplicate search strings. When a duplicate is found, you can take the following actions:

• Combine the duplicate contacts into a single contact that is the same for both the customer and vendor by using the Merge With capability on the Contact Card page. Typically, merging contacts is done only when the customer and vendor are the same legal entity. For more information, see Merge Duplicate Records.
• Delete the vendor business relation for the vendor or customer contact, and then use the Link to Existing action to link to a different contact.

Sales
Register New Customers